Monday, August 31, 2015

Staunton, August 31 – Vladimir
Putin’s effort to block Ukraine’s integration with Europe by trying to spark a
civil war in the former Soviet republic has failed, Leonidis Donskis says; and
consequently, Kyiv despite its current difficulties can look forward to
becoming a full member of the European Union sometime within the next ten
years.

Whatis regrettable he says, is that Ukraine was “not integrated into NATO
and the European Union earlier.” Had that been the case, “almost 7,000 people
would not have lost their lives,” although their sacrifice, Donskis says, is
hardly in vain. It has woken Europe and the West up to the threat that Putin
constitutes.

The Kremlin leader’s “honeymoon”
with the West is over, he continues; and Europe and the US will never react as
they did when he attacked Georgia in 2008 and say that “’Georgia was not
without sin.’” “Now, it has become entirely clear: Ukraine is absolutely
innocent, and all the fault lies with Russia.”

Unfortunately, Donkis continues,
more people are likely to die in Ukraine because “military actions will
continue. But there will not be a global war [because] Russia does not have the
economic strength for that.”

Today, he argues, “Ukraine is a
large, strong and consolidated country In the Donbas, a kind of new
Trans-Dnistria or frozen conflict has appeared.” That is a defeat for Russia
because it means the rest of Ukraine can develop in its European direction much
as Moldova has rather than be blocked by a Moscow-controlled “fifth column.”

To be sure, the continuing conflict
in the Donbas is “technically” something that blocks Ukraine’s entrance into
NATO, he says, but this is not the case in the US. “I am certain that Europe
will not leave your country but will integrate it. And certainly within ten
years, [Ukraine] will be a member of the EU.”

“The North Atlantic Alliance can say
that first this territorial conflict must be resolved. That will slow the move
to membership for five or ten years but not more,” the Lithuanian analyst
argues.

Ukraine needs to focus on domestic
reforms and to recognize that it will be able to achieve more than it expects
more quickly. After four or five years of hard work, Ukraine will be a totally
new place just as Lithuania was. Not all the problems will be solved, but
people will have gained a sense of self-confidence that will make additional
reforms easier.

NATO is critical. The Baltic
countries know that it is “a real force in the world” and “the only thing which
now saves us.” NATO has displayed its solidarity with its members in the east
and “sent the Kremlin a very clear message: ‘don’t touch or you will face an
entirely different scenario.’”

As
for Europe, “it prefers soft power” and economic leverage. “That is a good
thing, but if we want to establish a real European architecture of political
life (of course, together with Ukraine), this is impossible with such
approaches. Other institutions are needed.”

“The West is hardly weak,
but its institutions are really inadequate,” Donskis says. The UN must be immediately
reformed” so that Russia can’t use its veto to block findings against it. And
the EU must be transformed as well. Whenever there is a crisis, “who solves the
problems?” Not Brussels but Berlin and Paris.Ukraine can play a big role
in the revival of the European Union, he argues. “Euroscepticism is a good
which is traded in France, the Netherlands and England but not in Ukraine. You
believe in the EU and Brussels just as we belived in 2004. This faith will give
a new chance for the European Union itself.”Indeed, he suggests, “only
Ukraine is capable of bringing with it the new energy and faith” needed to
revive the aging house of Europe.

Staunton, August 31 – Like the
citizens of most countries, Russians are generally prepared to sacrifice to
support national security, but they can become outraged if they learn that
money taken from programs that helped them and supposedly given to the military
is being diverted as a result of corruption.

And that can have immediate
political consequences. Perhaps the best example is provided by Harry Truman who
rose from being a virtually unknown US senator to Franklin Roosevelt’s vice
president and eventual successor largely on the basis of the authority and
popularity he acquired by exposing corruption in US military spending during
World War II.

Consequently, the Kremlin has to be
concerned about the growing number of stories in the Russian media documenting
the fact that money that had gone for schools, hospitals and public welfare and
that now is supposedly going to the Russian armed forces is ending in the hand
of corrupt oligarchs and officials.

In the current issue of “Kommersant-Vlast,”
three articles document the most well-known cases of corruption in this sector
over the last two decades, point to the measures that the authorities have put
in place to stop it without much success, and detail oft-repeated official
statements that corruption in military spending is equivalent to “treason” (kommersant.ru/doc/2796116, kommersant.ru/doc/2797924
and kommersant.ru/doc/2797925).

The
journal’s Ivan Safronov points out that “Russia has never regretted spending
money on the armament of the army and fleet, but this funds not always have
gone where they are supposed to.”In
such cases, and almost 200 of them have been identified in recent years,
Russians are more than a little angry.

In
February 2012, Vladimir Putin said that “corruption in the military-industry complex
is absolutely impermissible.” And officials have suggested that the actions
they have taken in recent years are sufficient to prevent it. But reports of
new corruption cases, some of them massive and high-profile, suggest that they haven’t
succeeded.

In
the current environment where Russians know that they are being forced to
tighten their belts in order to finance Moscow’s military policies, they may no
longer be willing to treat this phenomenon as simply business as usual. And it
is not implausible to think that there are some Russian politicians who might
like to use this issue to boost themselves and their causes.

Staunton, August 31 – Demonstrations
ranging in size from 300 to 500 people took place in five Russian provincial
cities over the weekend, with participants demanding that Moscow change its
economic policy in order to prevent a further decline in standards of living
and provide real support and not empty promises.

But one politician says that Moscow
has no money or intention of providing real help given its military expansion and
so is planning to respond to these and other protests – including one by small
businesses against the closing of banks (profile.ru/rossiya/item/99332-rossiya-zovet-tsb-otzyvaet)
by banning media coverage of both rising prices and demonstrations.

Such actions may keep the lid on for
a time: they would certainly limit the attention to protests outside of Moscow.
But they would not be able to address another potential threat: the possibility
that some governors may decide to side with the demonstrators as a way of
building their own power in what is for many of them a rapidly deteriorating
situation.

That some of the regional heads may
be thinking about that possibility is in fact suggested by a survey of the situation
in the Urals region where governors find they are trapped between the demands
Moscow is making on them and the failure of the center to provide them with the
resources to meet those demands (ura.ru/articles/1036265713).

As for the demonstrations, “Novyye
izvestiya” reports today that Russians took to the streets in Volzhsky,
Kalach-na-Donu, Blagoveshchensk, Chita and Birobidzhan not to protest this or
that action but rather the decline in living standards as a result of central
government policies (newizv.ru/politics/2015-08-31/226365-banalno-net-deneg.html).

As a result of higher prices and
lower incomes, “Novyye izvestiya” writes, “not a small part of the population
simply is being impoverished and because no end of the crisis is in sight,
those protesting are telling the authorities that it is time to remember the
people and change domestic policies.”

Valery Borshchev, a former Duma
deputy and rights activist, says that “the higher leadership of the country
receives information about all protest actions and about [this] change in their
character. But it is necessary to point out at the present time the Center
really doesn’t have a genuine chance to provide help to the regions. For the
banal reason that there is no money.”

Consequently,
he continues, the enter plans “’to help’” via “other means.” He says that he
has information that the government is preparing a ban on the dissemination of
information of prices increases so that the population won’t get agitated. [It]
also plans to prohibit the media from reporting about prices and also about
protest actions” so that demonstrations won’t spread.

“But
such a policy won’t lead to a good outcome,” Borshchev says. “The crisis is not
going to end in the short term, and people already are really feeling its
influence.”

Dmitry
Gudkov, a member of the Duma’s constitutional law committee, agrees that the
leadership “knows all about this but hardly will do anything in the near term
to help the population.”They are “studying
the situation,” but small protests like this weekend’s don’t have much effect.

Moreover,
he continues, those who think the center must provide aid assume that this will
be possible only if oil is again at 150 US dollars a barrel, something that isn’t
going to happen.He notes that the situation
is getting worse as well because businesses are shifting capital abroad, but
the regime isn’t prepared for radical reforms.

Boris
Kagarlitsky, head of the Moscow Institute of Globalization and Social
Movements, says that the issue is not in the number of protesters but in the
demands they are making. “A protest against the reduction of the standard of
living is one the authorities will listen to,” although they won’t react at
least not yet.

As the situation gets worse, however, “the
number of participants at protest meetings will increase significantly,” he
says, “and then the Center will have to make concessions. The question is: will
it then have the ability at that time to satisfy these demands?” Right now, the
country needs serious reforms but Moscow isn’t ready to begin them let alone
carry them out.